Since 2005 I have had the good fortune to help build and sustain a vibrant discourse around teaching in English studies as Associate Editor of Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. This year I am moving on from this position along with the founding editors, Marcy Taylor and Jennifer Holberg.
My first contribution to Pedagogy was as a reviewer (On Becoming a Teacher Winter 2002). Soon after I joined the editorial team I contributed Where Do You Teach (Fall 2005), an Associate Editor’s Introduction (Winter 2006), and an introductory note (Winter 2008) to a collaboratively written essay a group of graduate students preparing to teach a literature course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, guided by their professor, Dale Bauer, and who were immersed in current debates about teaching by reading Patrick Allitt’s I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student, Shari Stenberg’s Professing and Pedagogy, Paul Kameen’s Writing/Teaching, Gerald Graff’s Clueless in Academe, and one textbook, Mariolina Salvatori and Pat Donahue’s The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty.
In addition to working with dozens of authors as an editor of the reviews section of the journal, I served as guest editor of a special issue on the small college department (Spring 2010) that included my introductory essay Centers and Peripheries in which I introduce the two goals of the special issue: to investigate what might be possible in the small college department as well as to suggest how these possibilities might inspire comparable intellectual work in other professional and institutional contexts. My essay surveys a selection of published writing produced within the small college department and points to the practices of smaller institutions and departments in which faculty and students collaborate and envision scholarly and creative activities within the mission and values of a particular institution. I argue that if the current traditional conception of the discipline has rendered a great deal of the work of the profession invisible, then it would make sense to talk more about what our colleagues are actually doing outside the doctorate-granting institution. And I conclude that representing more fully what we do will require us to move beyond general claims for teaching as a form of scholarship and away from decontextualized arguments about the value of teaching. Finally, my Commentary Who We Are, Why We Care (Winter 2010) appeared in our Ten Year anniversary issue.
Between 2006 and 2023 I edited over seventy-five book reviews, and I am grateful to all of the authors who shared with our readers a few of the many books on teaching and learning published each year. The list of books and authors is below.
Inventing the Discipline: Student Work in Composition Studies. Eds. Edited by Stacey Waite and Peter Wayne Moe (Jessica Masterson, Washington State University Vancouver)
Beyond Fitting In: Rethinking First-Generation Writing and Literacy Education. Ed. Kelly Ritter. (Molly Parsons, Keene State College)
Reading and Writing Instruction in the Twenty-First Century: Recovering the Transforming the Pedagogy of Robert Scholes. Eds. Ellen C. Carillo. (Martin Bickman, University of Colorado Boulder)
Engaging the Age of Jane Austen: Public Humanities in Practice. Eds. Bridget Draxler and Danielle Spratt (William Stroup, Keene State College)
Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media. Ed. Cajetan Nwabueze Iheka. (Jennifer Horowitz, Rhode Island School of Design)
Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies, by Nicole B. Wallack. (Jenny Spinner, Saint Joseph’s University)
Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom, edited by Patrick Sullivan, Howard B. Tinberg, and Sheridan D. Blau. (Nick Sanders, Michigan State University)
Learning Legacies: Archive to Action through Women’s Cross-Cultural Teaching, by Sarah Ruffing Robbins. (Siobhan Senier, University of New Hampshire)
From Boys to Men: Rhetorics of Emergent American Masculinity, by Leigh Ann Jones. (Christopher M. Parsons, Keene State College)
Digging into Literature: Strategies for Reading, Analysis, and Writing, by Joanna Wolfe and Laura Wilder, and Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines. (Paul T. Corrigan. “Teaching What We Do in Literary Studies”; Jamie K. Paton. “From the Parlor to the Classroom: An Undergraduate Perspective”; Nancy L. Chick. “Beginning Where the Students Are Beginning.”
Composition in the Age of Austerity, edited by Nancy Welch and Tony Scott. (Phillip Goodwin, University of Nevada, Reno)
Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle. (Rebecca C. Conklin, Central Michigan University)
Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age, by Thomas Leitch. (Patrick C. Fleming, Rollins College)
Other People’s English: Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy. Vershawn Ashanti Young, Rusty Barrett, Y’Shanda Young-Rivera, and Kim Brian Lovejoy. (Alexis McGee, University of Texas–San Antonio)
The Value of the Humanities, by Helen Small. (Kurt Spellmeyer, Rutgers University)
The Humanities “Crisis” and the Future of Literary Studies, by Paul Jay. (Deborah H. Holdstein, Columbia College Chicago)
Facing the Center: Toward an Identity Politics of One-to-One Mentoring, Harry C. Denny; Xiaoqiong You, Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering: Case Studies from MIT, Mya Poe, Neal Lerner, and Jennifer Craig; Meaghan Elliott, Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College, Katherine Kelleher Sohn; Adam Parker Cogbill. Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, Peter Elbow; Matt Switliski “(Writing) Centers and Margins.” (“Introduction: Developing a Dialogue about Language and Politics, by Christina Ortmeier-Hooper and Meaghan Elliott)
The Readers’ Thoreau and “Walden”: A Fluid Text Edition. (Paul Schacht, State University of New York Geneseo, Kristen Case, University of Maine Farmington)
Literature and Social Justice: Protest Novels, Cognitive Politics, & Schema Criticism. Mark Bracher. (Eric Leake, University of Denver)
Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres. Eds. Tracey Bowen and Carl Whithaus. (Lauri Bohanan Goodling, Georgia Perimeter College)
The Centrality of Style. Eds. Michael Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri. (Gretchen Dietz, Miami University)
The Evolution of College English: Literacy Studies from the Puritans to the Postmoderns. Thomas P. Miller. (Yvonne Bruce, University of Akron and John Carroll University)
Teaching the Literature of Today’s Middle East. Ed. Allen Web. (Beth Stickney, Keene State College)
On Critical Pedagogy. Henry Giroux.(Michael Sutcliffe, Washington State University Vancouver)
The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Thomas P. Miller. (Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, “Shaping the Field: A Review of The Norton Book of Composition Studies”; Thomas L. Burkdall, “Pencil Traces: The Conversations of Composition”; Lori Ostergaard and Greg A. Giberson, “What Do Writing Majors Need to Know? Contextualizing a Discipline’s Conversations for Undergraduates”)
Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook. Ed. Joshua Marie Wilkinson. (Kevin Craft, Everett Community College)
Dead Letters: Error in Composition, 1873-2004. Tracy Santa. (Andrea Olinger, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? Ed. Dianne Donnelly. (Adam Breckenridge, University of Florida)
A Feminist Legacy: The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Gertrude Buck. Suzanne Bordelon. (Susan Pagnac, Iowa State University)
The Transition to College Writing, 2nd ed. Ed. Keith Hjortshoj. (Cary Moskovitz, Duke University)
Embracing Vernacular Literacies. The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and Basic Writing Instruction. By Shannon Carter. (Jamey Gallagher, Lehigh University)
First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. Robert D. Richardson. (Sean Meehan, Washington College)
Science in the Writing Classroom: Interdisciplinary Rhetorical Explorations. Michael Zerbe. (Paula Comeau, North Dakota State University)
Assigning, Responding, and Evaluating: A Teacher’s Guide. Ed White. (Lee Nickoson-Massey, Bowling Green State University)
The Locations of Composition. Eds. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser (Caroline Dadas, Miami University)
Standards-Based Constructivism: a Two-Step Guide for Motivating Middle and High School Students. Ed. Pat Flynn, et al. (Be-Asia McKerracher, Truman State University)
Writing and Motivation. Pietro Boscolo and Suzanne Hidi. (Danielle Cordaro, Purdue University)
The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein as Writers in Community. Diana Glyer. (Cheryl O’Sullivan, Azusa Pacific University)
Approaches to Teaching Wiesel’s Night. Alan Rosen. (Nona Fienberg, Keene State College)
Making Teaching and Learning Visible. Eds. Daniel Berstein, Amy Nelson Burnett, Amy Goodburn, and Paul Savory. (John Webster, University of Washington)
Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation. Mark Bracher. (David Brenner, Universität Konstanz)
What Is College-Level Writing. Eds. Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg. (Katheleen Hunzer, University of Wisconsin, River Falls)
They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Eds. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. (Laura Grow, Central Michigan University, Phyllis Benay, Keene State College)
Teaching Rhetorica: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice. Eds. Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie (Shima Carter, Nova Southeastern University)
Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year. James M. Lang. (William H. Wandless, Central Michigan University)
The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. Walter Benn Michaels. (John Marsh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Disciplinary Identities: Rhetorical Paths of English, Speech, and Composition. Steven Mailloux. Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy. Elizabeth Ellsworth. (Dale Bauer and the UIUC Pedagogy Collective: Dale Bauer, Rebeccah Bechtold, Mike Behrens, Nick Capell, Adam Deutsch, Zia Glubhegovic, Marilyn Holguin, Merton Lee, Carl Lehnen, Kim O’Neill, Christy Scheuer, Melissa Tombro, Jason Vredenburg)
Local Knowledges, Local Practices: Writing in the Disciplines at Cornell. Ed. Jonathan Monroe. (John Bean, Seattle University)
Tactics of Hope: the Public Turn in English Composition. Paula Mathieu. (Roxanne Spray, University of South Carolina)
Personally Speaking: Experience as Evidence in Academic Discourse. Candace Spigelman. (Molly Flaspohler, Concordia College)
Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece. Debra Hawhee. (Chris Drew, Indiana University)
The English Teacher’s Companion. Jim Burke. (Howard Sklar, University of Helsinki)
Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project. Ed. Anna Leahy. (Miriam Marty Clark)
Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing. Carl Whithaus. (Paul L Yoder, Saint Louis University)
The Oxford Companion to the Brontes. Eds. Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith. (Diane Hoeveler, Marquette University, Terri Hasseler, Bryant University)
Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts. Julie Jung. (Sandy Tarabochia, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
On Bullshit. Harry Frankfurt. (David Kellogg, Northeastern University)
Why Does Literature Matter? Frank B. Farrell. (Cristy Vischer Bruns, University of California—Santa Barbara)
Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century. Gregory Colon Semenza. (Genevieve Bressard, University of Portland)
The Profession of English in the 2 Year College . Eds. Mark Reynolds and Sylvia Holladay-Hicks. (Wendy Swyt, Highline Community College, Jason Kane, Elgin Community College, Lucia Elden and Barry Alford, Mid-Michigan Community College)
The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication. Wayne C. Booth (Mike Edwards, University of Massachusetts and Collie Fulford, University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Crossing Borderlands: Composition and Postcolonial Studies. Eds. Andrea A. Lunsford and Lahoucine Ouzgane. (Frederick Luis Aldama, U Colorado Boulder)
Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America. Eds. Vivyan C. Adair and Sandra L. Dahlberg. (Christie Launius, Augusta State University)
Response to Reform: Composition and the Professionalization of Teaching. Margaret J. Marshall (Michele Fero, Michigan State University)
Professing and Pedagogy: Learning the Teaching of English. Shari J. Stenberg. (Kirsti Sandy, Keene State College, Colin Irvine, Augsburg College)
The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty. Eds. Mariolina Rizzi Salvatori and Patricia Donahue. (Mary Ann Crawford, Central Michigan University, John Webster, University of Washington)
The Art of Teaching. Jay Parini. (Bartholomew Brinkman, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Melissa Free, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
The End of Composition Studies. David W. Smit. (Lance Massey, Elon University)
Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post Civil-Rights Era.
Henri and Susan Searls Giroux. (Jonathan Vincent, University of Illinois)